Mr. Trump called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday to halt strikes on Russian diesel, saying the attacks are causing a global fuel shortage. He made the comments amid international unease that spiked Friday when diesel prices hit a record high, above $6 per gallon.

Fuel prices have also risen across the board due to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran and curtailed oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — a situation that could be politically devastating for Mr. Trump in the November midterm elections. The Middle East conflict has unfolded while Ukraine has spent months hitting oil and gas infrastructure inside Russia. 

In an eye-opening twist, Poland’s foreign minister last week suggested his country, if provoked by Moscow, would finish the job the Ukrainians have started. “If the Ukrainians have knocked out half of Russia’s refining capacity in six months, we could do it in six weeks and take out the other half,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Saturday during a discussion at the annual Yalta European Strategy meeting in Kyiv.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate return Monday amid a series of looming national security policy fights. Most urgently, members of Congress must address a military funding gap of roughly $200 billion, as bills for U.S. missile and rocket stockpiles, long-term military modernization and outstanding costs for the Iran war come due.

Key Republicans say they are concerned. “We’re seriously underfunding defense and the Department of War,” according to Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who says the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion overall defense budget is necessary but a challenge to get approved in the current political environment.

In July, the House narrowly passed a $1.15 trillion version of the budget and sent it to the Senate, where it has remained stalled amid Democratic resistance. In the interim, Republicans in the House and the Senate have been pushing to add $350 billion to planned 2027 defense spending through reconciliation bills — a process that has become burdened by unexpected costs associated with the six-month-old U.S. war with Iran.

The Kremlin in recent weeks has increased propaganda and gray-zone tactics — provocations that fall below the threshold of actual war — aimed at sowing unease in Japan, a top U.S. security ally in East Asia. One of the incidents saw the de facto Russian Embassy in Taiwan screen a 1945 documentary titled “Defeating Militarist Japan.”

The screening came days after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi lambasted the raising of a new Russian World War II statue in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk on Sept. 5. Russian military forces, meanwhile, conducted missile drills in the Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido, in August. The exercises followed the first-ever visit to the region by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Japan claims the islands, which were seized by Moscow’s forces at the end of World War II. A different Russian endeavor went public on Sept. 7: the opening of a road-bridge linking it to North Korea. These regional flexes maintain Moscow’s centrality in the “CRINK” — the unofficial axis uniting the anti-Western states of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

China’s People’s Liberation Army is using one of America’s most advanced AI agents to develop weapons, conduct cyberespionage operations and impose draconian surveillance controls, according to an alarming threat intelligence report by Anthropic.

Russia, Iran and Yemen terrorists were also detected by the AI company and its agent Claude conducting weapons work and government information and intelligence operations against the United States. That included Tehran’s use of American AI to target U.S. naval forces in the Middle East.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz examined the 154-page Anthropic report, which was published last week, stating that an unspecified Iranian threat actor used Claude to gather and analyze information on Navy forces in the region to “develop targeting recommendations.”

Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler examines the blowback that has consumed U.S. media attention since two current Anthropic researchers and a researcher who resigned from the company went public this month to say supercharged AI could destroy the human race by the end of the decade. 

“Industry insiders are begging for AI guardrails, unable to place them on themselves, as they race to win the AI war against China,” writes Ms. Sadler, who notes that OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, said in a blog post that his company wants to work with Congress to implement “mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation.

“Still, industry leaders cannot reach a consensus on what type of regulation is needed,” writes Ms. Sadler, who argues in her column that “a global commission on AI risk is needed. President Trump can kick-start things when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sept. 24.”

• Sept. 14-16 — AFA National Convention, Air & Space Forces Association

• Sept. 15 — Sen. Pete Ricketts, Nebraska Republican, on the Next Phase of Competition with China, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 16 — The Transatlantic Watchtower: Iceland’s Role in Great Power Competition, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 17 — AUKUS at Five: Progress, Challenges and the Way Forward, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Sept. 17 — A Conversation with Undersecretary of State Jacob Helberg on Securing America’s AI Supply Chain, American Enterprise Institute

• Sept. 22-23 — Nuclear Energy Policy Summit 2026, Atlantic Council

• Sept. 24 — 2026 Intel Summit, Potomac Officers Club

• Oct. 12-14 — AUSA Annual Meeting & Expo, Association of the U.S. Army